UC Yu: Focus on user needs looking for entrepreneurial opportunities in the post-app era

At the end of last year, talk to some media friends about the trend of China's internet in the 2013, I made two judgments: first, China's internet into the era of separatism, this year the Internet will be more integrated efforts may be greater;

Back to the middle of the year, the 1th is clear: the first half of the exposure of several investment mergers and acquisitions, including a lot of money. It can be said that the alliances of the situation has begun, the show is still behind.

Over the past two years, the decline of the PC Internet and the growth of the mobile internet have outpaced the expectations of many people. When the mobile internet wave approaches, they want to take advantage of both the advantages and resources to move forward, and more importantly, to supplement the mobile internet genes, that is, the so-called search tickets, this change is not easy, if the mobile internet as the sea, the equivalent of these companies from "herdsmen" into "fishermen."

For those including UC has been in the mobile internet for more than five years of start-up companies, as long as your business is solid enough, this is a belong to our era, because we are born fishermen, into the can be kept.

For today's early entrepreneurs and small teams, big opportunities are getting smaller and small opportunities are getting bigger. Come to this step, this is the Internet industry development inevitable, also should the old saying: This is the best of times, but also the worst of times.

On the one hand, China's internet has said goodbye to the era of outlaws, entrepreneurs want to do the next Baidu, Tencent's chances are basically gone. On the other hand, the investment and mergers and acquisitions of large companies are normalized, and the opportunities for startups to sell to large companies are great, and entrepreneurs are more likely to get out of the way than before. Over the past two years, Tencent, Baidu, Ali, and 360 are actively looking for opportunities to invest in mergers and acquisitions startups. UC itself has invested more than 10 small companies in the mobile internet sector, several of which have been merged by big companies.

Of course, now and two years ago compared to the entire mobile Internet business environment temperature difference is very large, it can be said from the steaming to cool wind swish. In the second half of 2011 to the first half of 2012, the entire mobile internet entrepreneurial environment can be described by the blood boiling, many entrepreneurs financing to take money is almost the thing; by this year, you go to find some VC, said to do a good app, want to get investment, the situation becomes very difficult.

The reason for this situation, in addition to the two points mentioned above, there are new changes in the mobile Internet itself-we have entered a "post-app era."

After the rapid development of the traditional app model in the past two years, the real ability to stand out is not too much. Looking at the top 20 app owners in the country, there are two types: the first is a giant migrating from the PC Internet, like Tencent, and the second is a company that has more than five years in the mobile internet business, like UC. In the past two years, there have been few companies that have made breakthroughs in app form and become the new power of domestic internet.

On the other hand, the various negative effects of app have begun to appear, such as the user's arrival rate and retention rate. Here we share two data, the first Apple app Store, which recently passed its five anniversary, has more than 900,000 apps, and 50 billion downloads, but 2/3 of apps are "zombie apps," and the data from another American research firm shows that About 68% of smartphones (which cover both iOS and Android) use up to 5 apps a week, and many people download apps for "impulsive" and often lose interest immediately.

In fact, the user's "aesthetic fatigue" of the app is easy to explain-essentially, the user is not really concerned about the app, but the satisfaction of their own needs, is the service, they do not care about the specific form of implementation.

This April, when Andy Rubin, the father of Android, was dismissed, Android was included in Sundar Pichai, the head of the chrome business. From Google's point of view, what Android has done poorly in the past few years is the inadequacy of the web's ecological construction. From the industrial environment, the app will cause the entire Internet ecology of the closed development, service providers and users to form a local area network between the links are difficult to interconnect. And Google, or the entire Internet itself can be developed on the premise that the interconnection. Currently, Google-led global internet forces are pushing the process to integrate users from simple apps into the web, or similar open platforms.

As a result, it is important for entrepreneurs to look at the situation. The future of mobile Internet is certainly not in the App Store, because it is the United States "mobile dream Net", its core is the front pay, ranking promotion, destined to only achieve a small number of high-frequency app, and even lead to bad currency expulsion of good currency.

UC is a typical representative of China Mobile Internet entrepreneurship, in this big opportunity to become small, small opportunities to become larger in the post-app era, we also hope that through their own efforts to help more entrepreneurs transition growth, and we provide the way there are two main types: first, investment support, the second is open platform. We have just released the uc+ open platform, including the Web Application Center, plug-in platform and the application of the bookmark platform three parts, is the hope for the vast number of developers and traditional Web sites to provide open extension operations services, to provide them with more efficient and convenient development path than the app model.

I think that the future of small and beautiful vertical applications will be like the PC Internet, return to the Web, or similar to the open system, because only the index, interconnected industrial environment can achieve a real benign ecosystem, hope that through common efforts, Can let mobile internet entrepreneurs not too much to consider the promotion and channel issues, and the main focus on the study of user needs, in this post-app era to realize their entrepreneurial dream.

(The writer is the chairman and CEO of UC, this article only represents the author's own point of view)